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Hal Scott argues that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can and should be dissolved. A slice:

President Trump’s decision on Saturday to fire Rohit Chopra as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is welcome if slightly belated. Since Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Chopra has been on an antimarket rampage, seeking to tie the new president’s hands by proposing or finalizing 10 new regulations, among them rules limiting bank overdraft fees and restrictions on terms bank can impose on the financing of green energy purchases.

In fiscal 2025 the CFPB will cost taxpayers an unnecessary $1 billion. These funds are being spent on antimarket enforcement actions and regulations that actually harm consumers. And the CFPB is performing a function that could be done more efficiently by other agencies.

Mr. Trump should go a step further and shut the CFPB down. As I pointed out in these pages in May, the bureau is operating illegally. Congress mandated that it be funded by the earnings of the Federal Reserve, but there have been no earnings since the Fed began incurring losses in September 2022 due to rising interest rates. These losses currently total $219.6 billion. The CFPB’s defense, in 13 pending enforcement cases where defendants have raised the illegality of funding, is that “earnings” really means revenue, an absurd claim under accounting standards. It is telling that the Fed, the source of illegal funding, has been silent on the issue.

Since the bureau is operating illegally, the president can close it immediately by executive order. The order should declare that all work at the CFPB will stop, that all rules enacted since funding became illegal in September 2022 are void, and that no remaining rules will be enforced.

National Review‘s Jeffrey Blehar is correct:

So when Donald Trump claims that America’s brave and bold new tariff regime — a 10 percent tax on all goods from China and a whopping 25 percent tariff placed upon exports from Mexico and our primary geopolitical foe Canada — is going into effect today, I don’t know what that means or whether it even means today. Trump has offered no specifics on how the duties are going to be collected and only the barest explanation of why they are being imposed either. We are apparently due more details this weekend, but I will only repeat what I wrote on January 20, the day Trump took office: If he actually succeeds in getting his way on tariffs — a lifelong obsession of his — he seems more likely to destroy his own presidency (along with the economy) than any of our rivals.

[DBx: To be clear – because protectionists, having no sound practical arguments, must resort to illogic, myth-making, and cheap debating tricks – Trump’s tariffs will not literally destroy the American economy. Trade isn’t a large enough part of the American economy for such tariffs even to come close to destroying it. These tariffs will, however, harm the economy. Nearly all Americans – rich, middle-class, and (especially) poor – will be made poorer than they would otherwise be by these tariffs, although most will not notice these effects. But it’s likely that enough ordinary Americans will, as a result of these tariffs, suffer such economic pain that they’ll vote to oust the incumbent party. If Trump carries through and sticks with his harmful trade policy, expect Democratic control of at least one house of Congress starting in January 2027 and a Democrat to move into the White House in January 2029.]

David Henderson argues that “tariffs on Canada and Mexico are way worse than tariffs on China.”

Christian Britschgi writes maturely about the recent deadly air crash at Reagan National.

Jonathan Lesser details yet another example of the irresponsible magical thinking of green progressives. A slice:

California’s headlong rush to force people to buy electric cars, trucks, boilers and stoves has skipped over a key detail: Where is all the electricity going to come from, and how will it be delivered?

While mandating electrification, California’s regulators have also imposed pricing strategies that punish consumers for using electricity when they most need it. Coupled with the rising costs of wind and solar generation—and the cost of backstopping that generation with batteries—electricity is becoming increasingly unaffordable.

Megan McArdle tells why “Trump, Musk are about to learn why reforming the government is so hard.” A slice:

Even if you think there’s a lot of deadweight in the federal civil service, many of its members are necessary workers doing necessary things. There’s no guarantee that the necessary ones will stay — indeed, these kinds of buyouts often see star performers leave while the laggards cling to jobs they can’t easily replace.

Even Republicans want Mom to get her Social Security check, and Dad to get his Medicare-funded hip replacement, and Sis to collect her veterans benefits. They want national parks and courts to stay open. If there is the slightest hiccup in these services, they will freak out. Any damage from too-hasty departures will be hard to repair, because federal hiring takes a lot longer than it does in the private sector.